'DON'T QUOTE ME ON THAT'

Each month a senior buyer from our

panel talks anonymously and candidly about the latest brand developments

On a recent trip to Ireland to investigate the impact of the smoking ban, a poster for an old Guinness campaign was spotted. Its message urged

consumers to hold up their pint, and do the "ruby test", looking for the wonderful ruby colour that was so characteristic of Guinness.

And on the bar, I noticed several extensions to the Guinness brand range.

So it didn't take the detection powers of Sherlock Holmes to work out that it was only a matter of time before Guinness began to tempt the pseudo-Irish across the water with something new.

The arrival of Guinness Extra Cold seems an ice age ago - and as we all know, good things come to those who wait.

So when I first heard of Guinness Red, I headed straight off to O'Neill's to try it - and that's a good move for Mitchells & Butlers, as nothing else was going to tempt me there!

I love the theatrical dispense, I love the launch to coincide with St Patrick's Day, and I love the product - creamy, cold, smooth and less bitter. Most of all, I love the rationale. Guinness is a drink that suffers from extreme seasonality. In that way, it resembles strawberries during Wimbledon and crackers

at Christmas.

There are so many people who spend all day on 17 March drinking loads of the black stuff, yet head for other products on the bar for the other 364 days of the year.

So a pint of the red stuff could well offer appeal on other drinking occasions.

With its more approachable flavour,

good-looking presence on the bar, and

easily recognisable, safe, branding, I think

it is likely to hold appeal for a very wide

range of customers.

And the cask-ale market could learn a lot from the arrival of this new pretender - drinkers want some pizzazz in their experience and the way a Guinness Red is poured and served will provide that.

Well done, Guinness - in my view, this new product has got legs, never mind hands. And I think the luck of the Irish will be with it.